SpeechyK

I'm about to finish at UT- Austin, what would you like to know?

Career changer here- about to be 32, finishing grad in May. No kids, but a husband and distant, fond memories of what regular paychecks and a grown-up social life were like. Starene29- I also applied to my two closest schools, got into one, rejected from the other. Have you met the professors at the schools you're applying for? Even though you've already submitted your apps, it might do you well to show your face in the clinic- ask to take a tour, letting them know you've applied to multiple schools and are wanting to get a feel for each one. Regarding the longer program, unless it's paid for, or there are higher grants available for it, that would be a no-go for me. If I had to spend literally ONE MORE SEMESTER in grad school, without a full-time income above $15/hr, I would go absolutely cuckoo. HopefulGrad2017, I did absolutely no clinical work in my undergrad- just volunteer and observation, completely self-guided. I don't know how grad programs look at online programs, but I don't think that's a factor. I will say that you would need to show any grad program that you can conform to their schedule and requirements. I would worry that they might think, since you did undergrad online, that you might not be cut out for being on campus and in clinic for long days. Obviously, that's not true, but you'll be making your case to a bunch of traditional academics who might spend 12 hours a day on campus. I would just tie in any full-time, in person employment experience in your SOP to allay any fears they might have about that.

In your statement of purpose, I would discuss your GPA. When I was applying transfer from community college to undergrad, I talked about how my GPA was 3.1, but the last 30 hours were 4.0. I know it's not the same exactly, but discussing how your grades were on an upswing (if they were) will help draw their attention to renewed focus on academics.

Agree with all of the above here. And this may not be a super popular opinion, but I'm going to lay it out there. Since employment rates are so high, and as long as the schools are accredited, location should be a BIG factor in your choice. I'm in my second year of a Master's program, and it can be devastatingly isolating if you don't take time to renew yourself. You are spending long, hard hours studying, prepping for clients, researching, reading, and maybe working. You're in school with a bunch of competitive people who may be wonderful human beings, but everybody is still finding their place and you might not want school to be your only source of friends. When the semester is over, or when you get a chance to breathe on the weekend, you're going to want friends and family, or the opportunity to meet friends and do things you like. Enjoy being outside? Pick somewhere with a temperate climate. Want to be able to drive home on the weekends to see friends/Mom and Dad? Pick a closer school with a lower ranking over one halfway across the country. Feel like you can't breathe if you're not near the ocean or mountains? You'll be suffocated in a flat, landlocked city and it will be hard to concentrate on school when there's no place to rejuvinate yourself. The best kept secret in this game is that if you don't find a school/life balance for grad school, you're gonna have a bad time. As long as the program gives you the opportunities you want (i.e., hospital internships, bilingual programs, neurological disorders, whatever interests you), give it a good long think about how your life outside of school will be. That should really help narrow down the choices. Edit: Location is also important if you're choosing between two state schools. You can graduate with a $40,000 degree, or with a $20,000 one, and you'll be making the same amount when you graduate. If you're using student loans, you'll be paying back double on the same income if you choose an out of state program and don't get financial assistance with it.

1. In state tuition is about $5k per semester, I can't imagine how people pay more. I know they do, I just don't know how they do it. 2. Sign up for GA/TA positions, they are the most lucrative of almost any part time job you can have in school. 3. I would totally recommend not working if you don't have to, but that's not an option for me. I had a TA position the first two semesters, and I picked up whatever part time work I could find for the past two semesters. I currently do wine/beer/liquor tastings at grocery stores and liquor stores because they are very easy to pick up/not pick up depending on your workload, and they pay about $20 an hour. I would pull from your existing skillset- childcare, sales, administrative, tutoring, whatever you can to find maximum pay for minimum time. Time is at a premium for you now, so working somewhere for $9 an hour generally doesn't make any sense if you don't have to do it. Paying for graduate school is the single most unpleasant part of graduate school. Good thing we're looking forward to a healthy job market :-)

Current student here, finishing my first year. I agree that experiences are likely very different between schools, but here is mine, for what it's worth. I am 31, married and living on student loans, whatever I can make during part time work, and my husband's kindness. What I'm about to detail is going to sound a little scary, but it is doable and you get really good at managing your time, balancing family obligations, and learning to place an emphasis on physical and emotional self-care. I am NOT an academic by nature, if I can do this, you can. When I was applying to grad school, other people who got their Master's Degrees swore that, although it was cognitively demanding, 6-9 hours would be full-time and that working + school would be totally manageable. That was incorrect. I've taken 11-12 hours each semester, but it's really more like 18 credit hours worth of work. Most programs require this amount of credit hours for around 5 semesters- 2 Fall, 2 Spring, and a Summer. I'll explain: First year: *Programs are different- some combine clinical experience and class work for both years, others do all of the classes first, then clinical experience. Some require full-time internships, others spread them out over part-time. Classes: 6-8 of those hours, at 2 credit hours each class. There's little to no "busy work," but an insane amount of reading. Probably about 50-100ish pages of reading per class, plus research articles. To date, I've never been able to read it all in time, so you learn to read what's absolutely necessary and bookmark the rest for winter break. Most of my classes have three-ish major assignments or tests. Historically, these major assignments range from research papers to prepared presentations on a given topic + a brief research paper that you turn in, or group projects. They have taken between 5 and 30 hours each to complete. I usually have between 2 weeks and 2 months to complete them, time frame decided by the professor. Group projects are a pain because we're all grown-ups with lives outside of school to coordinate, but you'll figure it out. Lots of google docs. Tests usually cover 4-6 chapters and come in the form of midterms or finals. Two tests might decide your whole grade in the class. But I get the feeling that, in such an exclusive program (Most are), they aren't looking to weed anyone out intentionally. It doesn't look good for these programs to have large numbers of people not completing the program. Buy the books, they will be valuable clinical resources. I hate buying books, so I wouldn't say this if I didn't mean it. I tend to focus on adults, so I rent the child books, but I've even ended up buying some of those. Whatever time you spent studying for undergrad classes, you should probably double that, unless your study efficiency has improved since then. Lots more extrapolation of incomplete data and critical thinking. In 3/5 weeks, there's nothing major due, but we often have big deadlines that all fall in the same week, so things get a little uncomfortable if you don't plan properly. I'm not great at making time to study, so some weeks I spend an hour studying/reading, other weeks I spend 15. Both semesters I've sworn to myself that I'd stay on top of reading and not pull all-nighters. Both semesters I've failed. Clinic usually takes precedence because there's a real, live person showing up for treatment at a designated time. Clinical experience: This is likely to vary greatly between schools. We have an on-site clinic and a required amount of credits to complete there before we go to off-site experiences. I typically have classes 2 days a week, and clinic on the other 2 days. Fridays are for working, researching, writing or studying. Sundays too for that matter. How much work you put in will depend heavily on your past experience, your knowledge of specific disorders affecting your clients, and whether or not your supervisor holds your hand to plan therapy. Mine don't, they want us to experience the entire process from scratch and I feel that it's been time-consuming but very educational. In the first and last few weeks of the semester, my actual treatment time is between 2 and 4 hours each week, with an additional 4-6 hours of planning, writing, analysis and research. Things lighten up in the middle of the semester and you find a groove. I probably spend 8-10 hours a week total on therapy, but it feels like more because you'll constantly be thinking about treatment techniques and activity ideas- in the car, in the shower, while you're brushing your hair. It invades most of your life for a little while :-) Outside work: Some weeks, I spend 70 hours a week on school and clinic things, some weeks it's 30. Live close if you can. Time spent commuting could be better used studying, treating or planning. I've managed to fit in 10-20 hours of work each week, BUT I have three jobs that are highly flexible. I'm a TA, so I can grade papers in my pajamas. I Temp at apartment complexes (something I did in my pre-grad school life) and I can turn down a job if I simply don't have time that week. I also do beer/wine demos at local grocery stores. Another thing I can turn down if I'm having a full-on Jessie Spano "THERE'S NO TIME," kind of week. I've had a few of those. I would recommend looking through your past skills inventory and find ways to make money that don't require you to show up for someone else's schedule. I can't imagine that would work very well. If you have teaching experience, put an ad on Craigslist. Stuff like that. Family/Personal life: Through all of this, I'm lucky to still have 3-4 evenings a week for relaxation with husband and friends. Think of it like a 60-70 hour a week job. People in the business world do it all the time and still get sleep, some social time, and some family time. But you kind of have to put your foot down about it. Last semester, I designated Saturday as a "no-school/work," day. It meant that two of my weekdays were pushing 18 hours each, but for one beautiful day every week, I did absolutely nothing except that which pleased me. And laundry. I did some laundry. :-) Second year: I don't know how exactly it'll go. I'm looking at similar class structure but a reduced load. The tradeoff is that I'll be doing an externship 3 days a week, from 8-5. I anticipate lots of late nights spent researching disorders that I've heard of in classes, but never seen in real life. So my 2-3 classes, thesis work and research for externship will have to be done in the other three days a week if I have any hope of keeping my "Saturdays belong to me and mine," rule. I'm making some financial adjustments in anticipation of a decrease in time for paying work as a result. So like I said, it's doable, but you have to be firm in designating family time, study time, and you time. Find the thing that centers you and revives you and make sure you have access to it. For me, it's yoga, time with my husband, cycling and a healthy splash of vodka. :-) Hopefully this helps. Let me know if I can answer any other questions.

Repeating courses, probably. Length of time- I took 11 years to get my bachelor's and am currently attending a top grad SLP program. About half of our cohort did not finish in 4 years, or have taken time off.

150Q/165V, volunteered for 2 places prior to applying. One adult-based, one child-based.

Very competitive. 500+ applicants this year, 40-50 spots, I think. Not highly ranked (173), but highly recommended by more than a few SLP's I've talked to. It's clinically-based, rather than research-based, which probably accounts for the ranking. Heavy bilingual influence, and slightly more medical than a few other programs I've looked at. Also, I applied, and they still haven't said anything back. I'm kind of pissed actually. But their advisor is very, very nice when you talk to her.

I'm at UT. Not everybody in the FB group has decided, so you're welcome to join and scroll through the conversations to see if what you're looking for is there.

The SLP I observe (10 years in the field) has said several times that "Once you leave school, nobody cares where you went. Your experience is what matters, so get good internships."

Congratulations you guys! If you're not already there, come on over to the group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/366427273474815/ This one will work for you even if you don't have a UT email address, but eventually we'll move back over to the closed group within UT austin and you'll need a utexas.edu extension for that

If SLP is your dream, I wouldn't recommend getting a backup master's unless you just have extra $$$ :-) As Midnight said, I don't think it would hurt or help either way. Choose your schools carefully, find ones that don't get as many applications and be willing to move. Rock the GRE and write a really passionate SoP and I think you'll find you'll do better than you think!

Agreed! I actually think it has more to do with how heavily GPA was ranked, in my case at least. I have extensive professional (out of field) experience and I kinda killed the GRE verbal portion, but only a somewhat competitive GPA. Considering UT takes your GPA for your upper division only, and Texas State takes last 60, my TxState GPA would have been .10 lower than the way UT calculates. I'm guessing that is what killed it, seeing as how GPA was the weakest part of my application portfolio. I know their average admitted last year was 3.8, as opposed to UT's 3.78. I'm not really heartbroken either- obviously UT is the higher-ranked school, but TxState does have some nice perks. Would have been cool to have a choice.

Called yesterday. Everyone who didn't get in the first time around is on a waitlist pending declines. They have a ranking system, so your number could be anywhere from 35-500+. I'm curious to find people who got in. I've already decided on UT Austin, but I'd be interested to know how they choose their candidates, considering UT is ranked so much higher.

That's AMAZING! Congratulations!

If you're starting with no debt and you can get an assistantship, go for it!

No word on TxState so far. Just that there were 500 applications this year (almost double from last year) and that it's taking longer than expected.

Looks like i have the unpopular opinion, but from where I stand (under a mountain of debt with no outside aid), I'd take the free school in a heartbeat. Are your parents involved? Would you be able to present your case for the dream school to them and potentially get some support to offset the difference? If not, I try to live by the "no student debt higher than your future salary," rule, and SLP's make good money, but I don't know if it's that good. What if you went to your "free," school and search all over the country for a bilingual place to do your (paid) CFY?

Yep. TA-ship apps go out in June, and decisions are made in August. Kind of unsettling.

Thank you so much! It's such a relief.

Ew. :-( I'm really sorry, I'm sure that wasn't a good feeling.

It is excruciating. I turned 30 this year, so I understand your timeline. I'm married and settled, and was basically waiting on grad school to start trying for a baby, so not getting in would not only be devastating scholastically for me, but emotionally as well I'm convinced my acceptance to UT has something to do with my 10 years of professional (out of field) experience prior to applying. Your age translates well to experience, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you!

I'm so sorry to hear that SpeechPathLove You have some great options though! Summer is a bear here, at least you'll get some seasons to enjoy! As a side note, do they actually put "rejected," on your status? That sucks!

Haven't heard back from my other application yet (TxState), so I'm currently still a Longhorn (UT Austin) and don't see that changing! I made a FB group for us, feel free to PM me for the link!